MEET HUC-J IR’S STUDENTS
2009
ISSUE 72 | 27
That first summer at Kutz Camp turned
into nine summers, and “the idea that per-
haps I could be a cantor in England began
to blossom.” As a student of Jewish History
at the University of Southampton, she wrote
her dissertation on Jewish liturgical music in
19
th
-
century Germany and her enthusiasm
for the possibility of cantorial study grew.
“
After taking a year to work in the Jewish
community in London, I decided to spend a
year in Israel, where I studied at an
ulpan
while also learning at the Conservative
Yeshiva and Pardes Institute of Jewish Stud-
ies.” The next stop was the School of Sacred
Music at HUC-JIR, first for the Year-In-
Israel and then in New York.
“
I’m returning to England with so many
possible definitions of what a cantor can be,
and all of that understanding is uniquely due
to the training I have received in Israel and
America,” Jacobs says. Her student pulpit ex-
perience ranged from being a Cantorial Intern
at Central Synagogue, the 2200-family com-
munity in New York City, to serving Or
Chadash, a 200-family congregation in Hun-
terdon County, NJ. Her senior recital was
‘
Hazzan
as
Darshan
:
The Role of the Cantor
as Educator on the
Bima.
’
“
I am very lucky to be returning to Eng-
land at a time when the British Rabbinate
has so much to offer and teach. I feel privi-
leged to fulfill a role that the Anglo-Jewish
community desperately wants and values.
Communities that make up the Movement
for Reform Judaism in Britain eagerly await
professional Jewish musical leadership to
support their changing liturgy and new
Sid-
dur
,
to provide access points for individuals
who connect to their Judaism through
music, and to support the lay musicians who
so ably lead music in many communities
around the country.” Jacobs concludes, “The
relationships I have made and the people
upon whom I know I can call will really be
the force that enables me to be an agent
of change.”
As a non-American Diaspora Jew,
Rabbi
Gersh Lazarow,
L ’09,
recalls, “I used to jus-
tify my religious practice or juxtapose my re-
ligious practice in the context of what
Orthodoxy does. Well, six years in America
gave me the confidence and the vernacular
to say that this is what I do because this is
what I believe. And this is what I feel is the
most meaningful way to live my Judaism.
And it is in comparison to nothing other
than my understanding of
Torah
.
That’s what
I’m so excited to go home and teach.”
His path to the rabbinate began as a
nine-year-old South African Jew trans-
planted to Melbourne, Australia – a “strong,
culturally rich community” – where he at-
tended day school, the Liberal Jewish high
school, and became involved in the Reform
youth movement. For his post-high school
“
option period” year, he went to Israel where
he worked on a
Kibbutz
,
studied, and led ar-
chaeology tour groups. He returned to
Australia to begin law school, but switched
his focus to major in Jewish Civilization and
minor in Near Eastern Archaeology. At the
same time, his days were filled with volun-
teering for the youth movement – directing
camps and youth groups – and ultimately he
became the national leader of the movement.
After university, he worked profession-
ally for two years as the Youth Program
Director for the United Jewish Congregation
of Hong Kong. “There was an incredibly
high rate of affiliation from young profes-
sionals who wouldn’t otherwise necessarily be
part of the synagogue,” Lazarow recalls. “The
community was made up of people that from
all over the world, and the one thing that they
had in common was that they missed their
families. These young professionals wanted
some sort of community and they were the
core of the congregation. I was a young per-
son living in an incredible city, learning how
to program and how to be a Jewish profes-
sional from some great role models.”
Back in Melbourne teaching Jewish
Studies at a high school, Lazarow
began to consider becoming a rabbi.
“
While I loved serving the Jewish com-
munity and teaching, I felt frustrated
that I didn’t have enough content, that
I was just one or two pages ahead of those I
was teaching,” he recalls. “Rabbinical school
appealed to me for the ability to just study
for the sake of studying, and learn more for
myself.”
While the obvious choice might have
been to study in Europe, Lazarow believed
HUC-JIR in Los Angeles was culturally
closer to Australia. This campus also offered
the opportunity to complete a year of study
at the Rhea Hirsch School of Education,
which he lauds for its faculty and the open,
exploratory nature of its program.
Lazarow has returned to Melbourne
to become the first school rabbi at Mel-
bourne’s only Progressive day school with an
ambitious goal: “The stronger the school,
hopefully the stronger the congregations;
and the stronger the congregations, the
stronger the Progressive identity in Aus-
tralia.”
For more on Reform Judaism in Australia,
please see page 58
T H E J E W I S H D I A S P O R A
Rabbi Gersh
Lazarow, L ’09
